The invention pertains to the field of communications network systems, in particular to packet-switching networks providing packet-layer transparent packet-switched connectivity.
For convenience of the reader, brief definitions for certain acronyms used in this specification are provided below:
ABI AMB IF unitAIS Alarm Indication SignalAMB Adaptive Concatenation Multiplexer BusA-M Adaptive-Mesh, a packet-layer transparent packet-forwardingnetworkFEForwarding EngineFEVForwarding Enable (Bit) VectorFIFO First-In-First-Out bufferFITForwarding Instruction TagHDLCHigh Level Data Link Control protocol, IETF RFC 1619/1662IFInterfaceL1Layer 1 i.e. physical layer of ISO OSI network protocol stackL2Layer 2 i e link layer of ISO OSI network protocol stackL3Layer 3 i.e. network layer of ISO OSI network protocol stackLSBLeast Significant BitMPLS Multi-protocol Label Switching, see IETF RFC 3032MSBMost Significant BitNENetwork Element; a node in an networkNMSNetwork Management SystemPOSPacket-Over-SDH/SONET, IETF RFC 2615PPPPoint-to-Point Protocol, IETF RFCs 1661, 1619, 1662QoSQuality of ServiceSDHSynchronous Digital Hierarchy, ITU-T Recommendations G.707, G.783SONETA subset of SDH standardized in North America
Conventional packet-switching networks are not packet-layer transparent, and furthermore require packet-layer routing, switching or forwarding look-up tables for their forwarding engines to resolve how to forward each packet. Theses aspects of conventional packet-switching networks make inter-domain administration of packet-switching networks complex, expensive and vulnerable to security breaches. Moreover, the packet-switching hardware logic becomes complicated when having to do packet-switching among multiple network domains, limiting the cost-efficiency and scalability of packet-switching networks.
These factors create a need for innovation enabling packet-layer transparent packet forwarding networks that do not need routing, switching or forwarding tables.